As most EU governments and the bloc’s high representative for foreign policy Josep Borrell try to emphasize the need to de-escalate tensions between Iran and Israel, the European Parliament has moved sharply in the opposite direction.
During its plenary session on April 25 the body adopted a resolution on “Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel, the need for de-escalation and an EU response” which included a series of ostensibly tough measures to set that response into motion.
Already the title betrays a pro-Israeli bias: it refers to Iran’s drone and missile attacks on Israel, but not to the equally unprecedented, and lethal, Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, which was the direct trigger of the Iranian strike in the first place. Titles matter as they frame the debates and resolutions.
It’s easy to be cynical about Iran’s appeals to the inviolability of diplomatic premises when its revolutionary regime held the U.S. diplomats hostage in 1979 — an act never repudiated, much less apologized for, by the Islamic Republic. Regardless of Iran’s track record, however, as a self-proclaimed guardian of the international legality, the EU could be expected to be consistent on the matter.
The resolution does refer to the bombing of the Iranian consulate, but in a rather clever-by-half fashion: it “deplores” the attack but won’t say who perpetrated it. A last-minute amendment by the Left faction in Parliament pointing to the Israeli authorship was rejected by the majority.
But the real issue is the trifecta of measures within the resolution called for by the MEPs: invoking the snapback of all UN sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program if Iran fails to comply with its nuclear obligations under the JCPOA by a deadline to be set unilaterally by the E3 (France, Germany, the UK); adding the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to the EU terrorist list; and designating the Lebanese Hezbollah as terrorist organization in its entirety (currently only the military wing, not its affiliated political party, is classified as “terrorist” by the EU).
The Trans-Atlantic Institute, the Brussels-based office of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), has hailed the adoption of these measures as a “historic, momentous decision” and praised the Parliament for “real leadership by calling for an end to the years of fruitless and toothless diplomacy that has only emboldened the regime in Iran.”
Yet the adopted measures do not amount to much. The European Parliament’s resolutions are not binding. The body does not set the EU’s foreign policy — it’s a prerogative of the Council of the EU. The decisions of the Council are taken by consensus among the 27 member states, at a proposal of the high representative Borrell who sets the agendas of the meetings of the bloc’s foreign ministers.
While the E3 is concerned with Iran’s nuclear progress, and French President Emmanuel Macron hinted in the wake of the Iranian strike on Israel that pressure has to be increased on Tehran also on the nuclear file, to trigger a snapback of the U.N. sanctions would require a political agreement with Washington. This may not be forthcoming as Biden signaled unwillingness to escalate matters with Tehran further. An U.N. snapback would most likely lead to Iran abandoning the Non-Proliferation Treaty and expelling the remaining International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, which, in turn, would dramatically increase the risk of an Israeli military action against the Iranian nuclear infrastructure or an Iranian push for a nuclear bomb. A big war in the Middle East is certainly not what Biden needs in the election year.
Of note, Borrell himself evinced a considerable skepticism about the usefulness of escalating sanctions during the parliamentary debate. He underscored that “sanctions are not policy, but only a tool of policy,” and that decades of piling sanctions on Iran have not led to positive changes in Iran’s policies. Rather than expressing support for the MEPs’ mulled ultimatum on the snapback, he stressed continued commitment to the nuclear diplomacy with Tehran.
As to the mounting pressure to include the IRGC in the EU terrorist list, that, again, requires unanimity of the member states and, as Borrell repeatedly stressed, a judicial ruling in an EU member state implicating the IRGC in a terrorist activity. At the moment, none of these conditions seem to be present. Germany is leading the way for a tougher approach, but not all the member states are convinced that prescribing an entire security body of a foreign nation would advance the EU interests. Spain and Italy are among notable skeptics.
And the designation itself would largely be symbolic. The EU already has, and uses, the necessary tools to sanction individual IRGC members and related entities for a host of transgressions, such as human rights abuses and support for violent activities and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The full prescription of Hezbollah as a terrorist group — a long-term goal of the AJC — has likewise proved to be elusive. In 2013, in response to the French pressure to punish the Lebanese organization for its role in supporting Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, the EU has invented a creative solution: designate the military wing of Hezbollah, but not the political one, in order to keep venues of dialogue with this influential Lebanese actor open.
Designating Hezbollah entirely would deprive the EU of that direct contact. That would be counterproductive as the EU leaders are clearly worried about the potential fallout of the war in the Middle East on Lebanon’s precarious stability — the country hosts 1.5 million Syrian refugees and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians which could be heading to Europe in the case of further destabilization.
Of further note, several European countries, such as Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and Poland, deployed troops on the Lebanese-Israeli border as part of the UNIFIL peace-keeping mission. Declaring Hezbollah terrorist could potentially make these troops targets. These are far weightier considerations for the EU decision-makers than a European Parliament resolution.
In sum, more than a turning point in the EU strategy towards Iran, the European Parliament’s resolution may not add up to much more than a simple virtue-signaling exercise. Yet it would be wrong to completely dismiss its significance: its political message testifies, once again, to the abysmal state of the EU-Iran relations.
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![Following a largely preordained election, Vladimir Putin was sworn in last week for another six-year term as president of Russia. Putin’s victory has, of course, been met with accusations of fraud and political interference, factors that help explain his 87.3% vote share. If this continuation of Putin’s 24-year-long hold on power makes one thing clear, it’s that he and his regime will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. But, as his war in Ukraine continues with no clear end in sight, what is less clear is how Washington plans to deal with this reality. Experts say Washington needs to start projecting a long-term strategy toward Russia and its war in Ukraine, wielding its political leverage to apply pressure on Putin and push for more diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict. Only by looking beyond short-term solutions can Washington realistically move the needle in Ukraine. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the U.S. has focused on getting aid to Ukraine to help it win back all of its pre-2014 territory, a goal complicated by Kyiv’s systemic shortages of munitions and manpower. But that response neglects a more strategic approach to the war, according to Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who spoke in a recent panel hosted by Carnegie. “There is a vortex of emergency planning that people have been, unfortunately, sucked into for the better part of two years since the intelligence first arrived in the fall of 2021,” Weiss said. “And so the urgent crowds out the strategic.” Historian Stephen Kotkin, for his part, says preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty is critical. However, the apparent focus on regaining territory, pushed by the U.S., is misguided. “Wars are never about regaining territory. It's about the capacity to fight and the will to fight. And if Russia has the capacity to fight and Ukraine takes back territory, Russia won't stop fighting,” Kotkin said in a podcast on the Wall Street Journal. And it appears Russia does have the capacity. The number of troops and weapons at Russia’s disposal far exceeds Ukraine’s, and Russian leaders spend twice as much on defense as their Ukrainian counterparts. Ukraine will need a continuous supply of aid from the West to continue to match up to Russia. And while aid to Ukraine is important, Kotkin says, so is a clear plan for determining the preferred outcome of the war. The U.S. may be better served by using the significant political leverage it has over Russia to shape a long-term outcome in its favor. George Beebe of the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft, says that Russia’s primary concerns and interests do not end with Ukraine. Moscow is fundamentally concerned about the NATO alliance and the threat it may pose to Russian internal stability. Negotiations and dialogue about the bounds and limits of NATO and Russia’s powers, therefore, are critical to the broader conflict. This is a process that is not possible without the U.S. and Europe. “That means by definition, we have some leverage,” Beebe says. To this point, Kotkin says the strength of the U.S. and its allies lies in their political influence — where they are much more powerful than Russia — rather than on the battlefield. Leveraging this influence will be a necessary tool in reaching an agreement that is favorable to the West’s interests, “one that protects the United States, protects its allies in Europe, that preserves an independent Ukraine, but also respects Russia's core security interests there.” In Kotkin’s view, this would mean pushing for an armistice that ends the fighting on the ground and preserves Ukrainian sovereignty, meaning not legally acknowledging Russia’s possession of the territory they have taken during the war. Then, negotiations can proceed. Beebe adds that a treaty on how conventional forces can be used in Europe will be important, one that establishes limits on where and how militaries can be deployed. “[Russia] need[s] some understanding with the West about what we're all going to agree to rule out in terms of interference in the other's domestic affairs,” Beebe said. Critical to these objectives is dialogue with Putin, which Beebe says Washington has not done enough to facilitate. U.S. officials have stated publicly that they do not plan to meet with Putin. The U.S. rejected Putin’s most statements of his willingness to negotiate, which he expressed in an interview with Tucker Carlson in February, citing skepticism that Putin has any genuine intentions of ending the war. “Despite Mr. Putin’s words, we have seen no actions to indicate he is interested in ending this war. If he was, he would pull back his forces and stop his ceaseless attacks on Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council said in response. But neither side has been open to serious communication. Biden and Putin haven’t met to engage in meaningful talks about the war since it began, their last meeting taking place before the war began in the summer of 2021 in Geneva. Weiss says the U.S. should make it clear that those lines of communication are open. “Any strategy that involves diplomatic outreach also has to be sort of undergirded by serious resolve and a sense that we're not we're not going anywhere,” Weiss said. An end to the war will be critical to long-term global stability. Russia will remain a significant player on the world stage, Beebe explains, considering it is the world’s largest nuclear power and a leading energy producer. It is therefore ultimately in the U.S. and Europe’s interests to reach a relationship “that combines competitive and cooperative elements, and where we find a way to manage our differences and make sure that they don't spiral into very dangerous military confrontation,” he says. As two major global superpowers, the U.S. and Russia need to find a way to share the world. Only genuine, long-term planning can ensure that Washington will be able to shape that future in its best interests.](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/media-library/following-a-largely-preordained-election-vladimir-putin-was-sworn-in-last-week-for-another-six-year-term-as-president-of-russia.jpg?id=34283894&width=600&height=600&quality=90&coordinates=483%2C0%2C483%2C0)
